The Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Ellen McCarthy discusses how to conceptualize and develop standards and measurements on information quality, how to align AI with accurate and reliable information, and how challenges and potential of leveraging AI can support information quality. Also, be sure to check out and...
info_outline #198 Melissa Graves Frank Emerson and Pat Hendrix on OSINTThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Melissa Graves, Frank Emerson, and Pat Hendrix discuss the history of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), how publicly available information (PAI) is being analyzed by students in the Department of Intelligence and Security Studies at The Citadel, and The Citadel’s which will be...
info_outline #197 Maksym Tereshchenko on How the Russia-Ukraine War Sparked a New Era in Risk Management and Cognitive SecurityThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Maksym Tereshchenko of discusses his firm’s AI platform and how it is being used within the informational dimension of the Russia-Ukraine War. Recording Date: 19 July 2024 Research Question: Maksym Tereshchenko suggests as interested student examine: How can we accurately...
info_outline #196 Dave Troy on Threats to DemocracyThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Dave Troy discusses threats to democracy. The related problems of disinformation, misinformation, and radicalization have been popularly misunderstood as technology or fact-checking problems, but this ignores the mechanism of action, which is the reconfiguration of social capital....
info_outline #195 Michael Zequeira on the Effects of Social Media on Military RecruitingThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, US Army Major Michael Zequeira discusses his Army Command and General Staff research entitled: the Effects of Social Media on Military Recruiting. More and more Americans receive information from social media. This work looks at the effects of social media’s rise on U.S. Army...
info_outline #194 Mike Hall on the Moral Imperative of Our TimeThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Dr. Wayne “Mike” Hall discusses his latest capstone book: the Moral Imperative of Our Time-Purposeful Intellectual Growth. According to Mike, America’s intellect is sharply declining; he implores national security leaders to address this problem immediately by: 1) improving...
info_outline #193 Hatteras Hoops on Human Domain SecurityThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Hatteras Hoops discusses business and national security considerations related to Human Domain Security. Current concepts around insider threat, insider risk, insider trust, insider fraud, critical people protection, personnel security and counterintelligence are broadly considered...
info_outline #192 Dr. Josh "Bugsy" Segal on the American Maginot LineThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Dr. Josh “Bugsy” Segal discusses his ongoing concerns about the “American Maginot Line.” He is concerned that the United States is insufficiently and inappropriately funding the cognitive war that is bearing down on us. Moreover, the United States domestic political system...
info_outline #191 Jose Davis on Public Affairs Integration and Leveraging AI for Operations in the Information EnvironmentThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, US Air Force Captain Jose Davis discusses his paper, which is entitled: "Leveraging AI for Operations in the Information Environment: 3 Demonstrations in Disinformation, Social Media, and Entropy." The paper focuses on the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the realm of...
info_outline #190 Army Command and General Staff Information Advantage Scholars SymposiumThe Cognitive Crucible
The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, we learn about the US Army’s Command and General Staff College Information Advantage Scholar Program. Two officers from the 2024 IA Scholar cohort–Army MAJs Vincent Michel and Josh Keller–present their research and also discuss their overall experience. Additionally, Cognitive...
info_outlineThe Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association.
During this episode, Dr. Heather Gregg of the US Army War College explores how collective identity building and myths--stories designed to tell a group of people who they are, where they came from and how they should behave--shape violent conflict. Heather contrasts the way identity is used by insurgencies and counterinsurgency efforts and sketches lessons learned from recent operations against Al Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq, as well as the role that identity is playing in the Ukrainian war. Our wide-ranging conversation also covers implications of horizontal and vertical cultural transmission of information, myths as a form of storytelling, and mixing up myth and history.
Resources:
- Cognitive Crucible Podcast Episodes Mentioned
- Dr. Heather Gregg’s Personal Website
- Identity wars: collective identity building in insurgency and counterinsurgency by Heather S. Gregg
- Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
- Building the Nation: Missed Opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan Hardcover by Heather Gregg
- The Path to Salvation: From the Crusades to Jihad by Heather Gregg
- The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
- A Short History of Myth Paperback by Karen Armstrong
- Scott Atran, "Address to UN Security Council on Youth and Extremism." (2015)
- Vamik Volker, "The Need to Have Enemies and Allies," Political Psychology 6, no. 2 (1985): 219-247
Link to full show notes and resources
https://information-professionals.org/episode/cognitive-crucible-episode-101
Guest Bio:
Dr. Gregg’s opinions are her own & do not represent the opinions of the US Army War College or the Department of Defense
Heather S. Gregg is a professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). From 2006-2019, she was an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Department of Defense Analysis, where she worked primarily with Special Operations Forces. Prior to joining NPS, she was an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation. In addition to her academic experience, she has spent time in several regions of conflict including Palestine/West Bank and the former Yugoslavia.
Dr. Gregg earned her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2003 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her dissertation work was on historic and contemporary causes of religiously motivated violence. Dr. Gregg also holds a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School, where she studied Islam, and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Dr. Gregg is the author of The Path to Salvation: Religious Violence from the Crusades to Jihad (Potomac, 2014) and Building the Nation: Missed Opportunities in Iraq & Afghanistan (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She also has published articles and book chapters on Al Qaeda, including “Fighting the Jihad of the Pen: Countering Al Qaeda’s Ideology” (Terrorism and Political Violence, 2010) and “Crafting a Better Grand Strategy to Fight the Global War on Terror: Lessons from the Early Years of the Cold War” (Foreign Policy Analysis, 2010), in addition to co-editing and contributing to The Three Circles of War: Understanding the Dynamics of Modern War in Iraq (Potomac, 2010).
About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain.
For more information, please contact us at [email protected].
Or, connect directly with The Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, on LinkedIn.
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